Dance fly with prey

Dance fly about 6mm long with a plant bug nymph breakfast.
Brian V.

yum yum shlurp shlurp

What, run out all ready !- I'm sure these are smaller than they used to be

I'll just give it a shake

Nope still none left

Typical- just dumps the empties

I actually feel a bit of guilt for laughing...

Nice photos, clever captions!

Lovely capture Brian, looks like a pregnant female as well. The dance fly looks a lot like a robber fly to my eyes, are they related?

Dave

Thanks for the comments,
Always difficult to label prey predator pics but I thought a bit of humour might make them more palatable
Dave- They are not the same family but do look similar- dance flies are a lot smaller (4-10mm) and less hairy than robber flies. I suspect they also tend to go for non -flying prey from my limited observations.
Brian V.

Hiya Brian,
Nice shots, was watching one of those doin the same in garden yesterday, not well enough at mo to take shots hoping this will pass soon damn it eh.
Oh btw I jus gotta Callistemon Linearis & gotta Salignus on order just to hopefully bring more critters in.
Cheers for now
Mark

Great sequence Brian.
Reminds me of a lot of 60s Sci-Fi B movies!

Thanks Brian for that information, I've filed it in my macro folder in Outlook. So many insects, so much to learn, so little time!

Dave

amazing series of behaviour shots brian....
the captions do what you hoped ...add a spot of humour to a very macabre scene

Great shots! The insect world never ceases to amaze me.

When do you typically use f/11 as opposed to say f/16? I'm guessing f/11 offers a bit more overall sharpness since diffraction should not be a factor, but at the cost of DOF.

Thanks Mark- hope you feel better soon.
Brian V.

Lester Wareham wrote:
Great sequence Brian.
Reminds me of a lot of 60s Sci-Fi B movies!

A B movie!
Thanks Lester
Brian V.

chemicalbro wrote:
amazing series of behaviour shots brian....
the captions do what you hoped ...add a spot of humour to a very macabre scene

Thanks Alan- I wondered why the fly had discarded the prey until I realised the main body cavity literally had been emptied.
Brian V.

Thanks Sayer
Virtually all my shooting recently has been at F11, 1/200th ISO200- partly for sharpness but mainly to get a reasonable amount of natural light on the scene so in many cases the flash just acts as fill- if I need more DOF and the subject is cooperative I just use focus stacking.
Brian V.

Great series Brian and witty commentary.

great set of photo's!